Buddhist Scriptures E-Book

E.J. Thomas

• Herausgeber: Blackmore Dennett
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

This small book presents 23 highly readable selections from the Buddhist Scriptures, in which we read the words of the Buddha and the early Buddhist disciples themselves.

Leseprobe

BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES

by E.J. Thomas

Published 2018 by Blackmore Dennett

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES

CHRISTIAN PARALLELS

THE DREAM OF QUEEN MAYA

THE BIRTH OF GOTAMA

THE FOUR SIGNS

THE GREAT RENUNCIATION

THE CHAIN OF CAUSATION

THE BEGINNING OF BUDDHA’S PREACHING

THE ORDINATION OF YASA

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

THE FIRE DISCOURSE

THE WEAVER’S DAUGHTER

THE QUESTIONS OF MALUNKYAPUTTA

THE QUESTIONS OF UTTIYA

THE QUESTIONS OF VACCHAGOTTA

BIRTH-STORY OF THE BLESSINGS OF THE COMMANDMENTS

BIRTH-STORY OF KING MAHASILAVA

BIRTH-STORY OF THE CITY WITH FOUR GATES

THE PIG-FACED GHOST

THE JEWEL DISCOURSE. A SPELL

DHANIYA THE HERDSMAN

BUDDHA’S VISIT TO CHUNDA

THE DEATH OF BUDDHA

THE NON-EXISTENCE OF INDIVIDUALITY

NON-INDIVIDUALITY AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

INTRODUCTION

To what extent can we speak of Buddhism as a religion--a system which rejects a belief in an immortal soul and an eternal God? We shall do well not to seek to answer this by fitting our reply into the limits of a ready-made definition. Buddhism implies a certain attitude to the universe, a conception which gives meaning to life, but it does not look upon the ultimate reality of things as personal. It succeeds indeed, more than any other system, in evading ultimate questions, though even in rejecting metaphysics it was unable to remain wholly unmetaphysical.

The chief ontological principle of Buddhism is that all compound things are impermanent; and it went on to assert that all things are compound except space and Nirvana. The self is compound, and hence impermanent. When the individual is analysed into body and mind with its qualities and functions, what is there remaining

behind? The soul, atman, said the Vedantin, that permanent entity which is in reality identical with the absolute and eternal Brahma. But the Buddhist answer was that there is nothing remaining. The elements of the self are the self, just as the parts of the chariot are the chariot. Whether this is philosophically or even psychologically sound is another question. This analysis was applied to all things and beings, and hence also to the gods. The gods were not denied, but their permanence was, and hence there was no paramatman or universal soul, of which the gods, according to the orthodox philosophy, were the manifestations. In this sense Buddhism is atheistic. The gods were merely beings, involved like us in incessant change, who by merit had acquired their high rank of existence, and who would lose it when their merit was exhausted. They were, as the Sankhya philosophy said, office-holders, and any one by sufficient merit could attain to that rank. Buddha himself, according to the legends of his previous births, several times became Sakka (Indra) and even Brahma. In the birth-story of the hare (Jataka, No. 316), when the hare resolves to sacrifice himself to provide food for the brahmin, the throne of Sakka, king of the gods, becomes hot, and Sakka becomes uneasy on finding that there is a being with so much merit who is likely to displace him.

Buddhism, however, is no theory that the world is a concourse of fortuitous phenomena. It retained the Indian doctrines of rebirth and karma. Karma, “action,” is the law of cause and effect applied to the moral world. Every action brings its fruit, either in this life or another. It makes possible the moral government of the world without a moral governor. But action can only lead to temporary happiness or misery. It cannot--any more than in the Christian system--bring salvation. Salvation, the freedom from the circle of birth and death, results from knowledge, and the saving knowledge which is the essence of positive Buddhist teaching consists in the four truths--the fact of suffering, the cause of suffering, the destruction of suffering, and the Noble Eightfold Path leading thereto. This is the teaching which makes Buddhism a religion. Buddhism offers not merely a philosophy, but a theory of life for those who are suffering, for the weary and heavy-laden, which has for centuries met the religious needs of a great part of the human race. “In religion,” said Hegel, “all that awakens doubt and perplexity, all sorrow and care, all limited interests of finitude, we leave behind us on the bank and shoal of time. . . It is in this native land of the spirit that the waters of oblivion flow, from which it is given to Psyche to drink and forget all her sorrows.” In no religion has this been more deeply realised than in the perfect calm of the Buddhist saint, who in his earthly life has “crossed to the farther shore,” and realised the eternal great Nirvana.

As there is no soul, no permanent entity which transmigrates, the doctrine of rebirth had to be modified in the Buddhist system. The elements or factors of the individual are composed of five groups (khandhas): (1) the body, (2) sensations, (3) perceptions, (4) the predispositions (sankharas) forming the mental and moral character, (5) consciousness. It is through these groups that transmigration takes place, and the cause which leads to rebirth is “thirst” or clinging to existence. Impelled by this thirst the being is reborn as an individual in a new existence, higher or lower according to the karma accumulated. Rebirth ceases when this thirst is extinguished. To bring about this extinction many bonds have to be broken, errors corrected, and delusions destroyed, on the Noble Eightfold Path leading to perfect knowledge.

What the early Buddhists meant by Nirvana (“blowing out, extinction”) has been much discussed, but it is at least possible to remove certain misconceptions about it. It has been confused with another question which has much exercised Western thought--what takes place at death? Is it

To drop head-foremost in the jaws

Of vacant darkness and to cease?

The ordinary Buddhist was not oppressed with this doubt. He knew that the ordinary man, who had not completed the Eightfold Path, was reborn. Nirvana is the extinction not of the self, but of the clinging to existence. To look upon it as the extinction of the soul is merely to substitute a question debated by Western theologians and materialists. Nirvana may be attained during life. It is a further question to ask what becomes at death of the Arahat in whom the clinging to existence is extinguished. The word Nirvana is used in two senses. To assert this is not a mere inference, for the two meanings are distinguished in the sacred texts. The Nirvana attained during life is called sa-upadisesa, “having the khandhas or elements of the individual remaining,” and the Nirvana at death is anupadisesa, “not having the khandhas remaining.” All the descriptions of Nirvana that speak of enjoying a blissful state refer to the Arahat who has attained liberation while alive. Buddha won Nirvana when he attained enlightenment under the Bodhi-tree. A good example occurs in the Discourse of the Right Wandering of a Monk (Sutta Nipata, II. 13), where Buddha is thus addressed:

We ask the Sage, firm-minded, of great wisdom,

Who has crossed to the other shore, and reached Nirvana,

How should the monk, abandoning a dwelling,

Rejecting the passions, rightly wander in the world?

The verb here used (parinibbuta) for “reached Nirvana” is the same as used in the account of the death of Buddha; and Buddha shortly before his death, when warning his favourite disciple Ananda that Chunda, who gave the food which led to his last illness, is not to be reproached for it, defines this final Nirvana as anupadisesa, “consisting in the complete passing away of the elements of being.”

The question then remains as to what becomes at death of the Arahat who has attained Nirvana. That question was put to Buddha, and he refused to answer it, but we can see what the inevitable view is on the Buddhist theory of the self. In the account of Buddha’s death there is no hint of his continued existence, but only a repetition of the Buddhist truth, “impermanent are all compounded things.” In the Questions of Milinda the answer is more definite: “The Lord has reached Nirvana with the extinction of the roots which consists in the complete passing away of the khandhas. The Lord has perished, and it is impossible to point him out, saying, ‘Here he is’ or ‘There he is.’ But the Lord can be pointed out in the body of the doctrine, for the doctrine was taught by the Lord.”

But what appears the obvious conclusion from these passages, and from the Questions of Malunkyaputta, Uttiya, and Vaccha, given below, has not led to harmony in the theories of Western scholars. Some of these views will be found discussed in Mrs. Rhys Davids’ Buddhism. The matter is still further complicated, because the later developments of Mahayana Buddhism did definitely introduce the idea of an after-life of bliss for the Arahat. The form of Buddhism which arose in Northern India some four centuries after Buddha’s death, and which called itself Mahayana, “The Great Vehicle,” exaggerated the view that all compound things are impermanent into the theory that all phenomena are illusory. In this respect it is parallel to the Vedanta doctrine of Maya; and there is little doubt that the Vedanta influenced this development. Further, as the Vedanta taught a permanent reality behind the illusion of Maya, so in Mahayana Buddhism the idea of Nirvana was converted into a positive conception, the idea of an eternal reality, in which dwell all the Buddhas as pure spirit. But whether this teaching be considered a logical development of the original system, or an accretion and corruption, it is certain that it does not belong to primitive Buddhism, nor to those schools of Buddhism which have best preserved the original tradition. The reader will find some valuable information on this question in Dr. Barnett’s introduction to The Path of Light in the same series as the present volume.

THE BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES

The Buddhist scriptures, as preserved by the Buddhists of Ceylon and Further India, are in the Pali language, a language related to Sanskrit much as Italian is related to Latin; and for several centuries before and after Christ it was spoken in varying dialects over most of Northern India. Buddha, according to the Ceylon tradition, died 543 B.C., but it is generally agreed that this date is too early. The latest calculation by an Indian scholar, Mr. V. Gopala Aiyer, makes the date fifty-six years later, 487 B.C. Immediately after Buddha’s death the first council is said to have been held at Rajagaha (now Rajgir in Behar on the borders of Bengal), where the Vinaya (discipline) and Dhamma (doctrine) were recited and fixed. The historical evidence for this council is much disputed, but it is extremely probable that some such collection was made about this time. Nothing was written down. It was preserved, as the Vedas had already been preserved for centuries, by memory. It is this very fact which strengthens the view that we possess a faithful picture of the preaching of Buddha, a preaching which extended over more than forty years. To determine to what extent the discourses have been worked up into other forms and added to, and especially how the rules of the Order have been gradually elaborated, is a work for future scholars.